


Cranes in the Sky

by soulmuzik



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Black Scott Summers, Crossover Pairings, F/F, F/M, Family Drama, Gen, Indian Jean Grey, M/M, Married Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson, Minor Jane Foster/Thor, Minor Sharon Carter/Natasha Romanov, On Hiatus, Thor is going through it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2018-12-06 06:36:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11594973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soulmuzik/pseuds/soulmuzik
Summary: When Thor's life falls apart, all roads lead home. And home is where his broken heart is.It's the thing they have in common.





	1. Chapter 1: Coming Home

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [My Autumn Touch of Gold](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7411651) by [prettylittlementirosa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettylittlementirosa/pseuds/prettylittlementirosa). 



> Disclaimer: Any recognizable characters, persons, places, or things, are none of mine. I profit from nothing. 
> 
> Here is the beginning of a WIP multi-chapter that I am praying I can finish.
> 
> Thororo (or Thor/Ororo) endgame! All-Human fic. Lots of angst. Let's hope that things make sense!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Re-written! I hated the way I described Loretta so much that I had to re-do it. I feel like theyre all a little more in character. now, too. Same premise!

The steady rock of the train lulls Thor to sleep, and the image of D.C with its red and yellow leaves breaking off in the wind disappears behind heavy eyelids.

When he opens his eyes again, they’re filled with gray brick walls and the neon signs lining them, reading _Manhattan_.

He hums his voice back to life, arms crammed in a seat that’s too small to sleep in. The stiffness in his neck lets him know that he will regret this later. He pulls his jacket from around his shoulders, and squints against the glare of fluorescent lights to look out his window. Bodies move in perfect disharmony; their directions unpredictable, their heads bowed down to screens and their feet narrowly missing someone else’s. Thor’s grogginess has him moving ungracefully from his seat, slow to stand and shifting. The woman beside him, old and mean looking, deems his presence a nuisance to her pensive stillness. She raises her shoulders up in annoyance at his every move, huffing every time he so much as turns.

He arches an eyebrow, “if you had this much of a problem with the close quarters, I’m sure there was room in first class”, he flashes a smile that makes her frown deepen, collecting his bag and being sure to huddle his body in the way she does in her seat as he exits. She gives him the finger.

He smiles.

Someone beside him laughs, suddenly, stealing his attention, “That’s New York for you”

Thor snorts, nodding, “That it is.”

Thor hopes his voice has not betrayed anything; how much of New York can he claim to know when it’s been so long since he’s been here? Four years is a long time to be away, and all these people surrounding him? They know this city. They _are_ this city. Him? He _used_ to be this city…but he’s not sure if that counts any more. For a lot of reasons. Now, he may as well be a guest in his backyard. A stranger in his own home.

When he finally finds a bench, so that he can properly collect himself, its covered in Bermuda short wearing tourist; a severe looking matriarch wears a white visor and a fanny pack and talks too fast and too loud and does absolutely _nothing_ for Thor’s mood.

He ignores the ornery, sleepy thought to shove her off: when in Rome, one does not always have to do as the romans.  What was it with rude older women and public seating today?

He opts to stand, setting his bag down and pulling out his phone. His fingers scroll of their own volition, landing _almost_ on the contacts button. He withdraws, going to Google Maps instead. He doesn’t know if being back home should be everyone’s business just yet. Sure, he had a couple people expecting him, but one wrong phone call--one wrong, misguided, _stupid_ phone call to his mother or one of his friends could lead to the kinds of confrontations he was _not_ ready to have.

Better to be a stranger, if only for a little while longer.

He shakes his head at himself, trying to ignore the way the word _coward_ rises up in his chest.

He steps out of the terminal and into a city his feet navigate as if there had been no time lost. The streets are still full of cars and bikes and the big city mayhem people create when there’s too many of them in one place. Nothing has changed.

Except him.

(~*~*~*~)

When Thor was young the world was his. He recognized that. His father came from old money; business men and investors who always played the stocks smart and their business deals smarter. His father inherited a multi-million dollar share from a business partner who, for a time in his life, he saw more than his children and his wife. For the children, the absence wasn’t considerately missed. There was enough money to fill the space he left. Frigga let raising her children and working fill that space instead. Still, on the surface, the Odinson family was spotless. Frigga was an international business lawyer, and worked with her CEO husband primarily, but was outsourced to hundreds of other well-paying corporations. She brought her sons up in the best private schools, with the best tutors, and they took full advantage of what all money could give.

And money gave them everything. Thor and Loki were spoiled rotten. Their lives were fit for kings. So long as their grades were good and they were visibly celebrated for their achievements, their dirt was untouchable. And neither of them saw a problem with that.

Until Thor went to college. He did his thing; joined the football team and a frat and lived in the house with all of his father’s business partner’s sons. He was everything money threatened to make him.

And then he met Jane Foster.

The thought of her makes his thoughts stop, and let go of a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Thinking about his family, and Jane, and how he lost all of them wasn’t going to make the phone call he was dragging his feet to make any easier. But it had to be done. This coffee shop he decided to hole up in closed in half an hour. He scrolled through his contacts, let his thumb hover one last time, and hit _call_.

 “Loki?”

“ _Well,_ look who decided to pick up the phone”, he spoke too loud and too bright, the way you would to a customer in a coffee shop, for example. His voice betrays the gentle way he spoke only weeks before when a very proud Thor came to him in his hour of need and Loki, _out of character_ , decided to help him.

The free home repairs he expected in return saved him from selflessness, though.

“Are you…are you alright?” Thor asks, hoping his smile doesn’t betray his confusion because there was always a con with Loki. And, no matter how frustrating that always meant Thor’s life would become, it made him feel at home the way getting off the train had not.

“Mrs. Stevens, you flatter me”, he says, his voice distancing as a smattering of others come into focus and swelled about him, nearly drowning out his voice. Thor raises an eyebrow as his brother continues, “oh my, how forward of you madam. I don’t know if your husband would appreciate that. Mrs. Stevens, I’m blushing, and it takes an awful lot for me to blush.” A door closes, and the sounds muffle into silence. Loki clears his throat, waiting.

Thor delivers, laughing himself hoarse, “ _Mrs. Stevens_?”

“Your big mouthed friend Fandral was right beside me. Do you want _The New York Times_ to know of your return?”

Thor lets the laugh subside, just enough, “Loki, are you having an affair with one of your aged clients?”

“She _wishes_ I were”, Thor can practically see the snobbish adjustment his brother makes to his tie, and he smiles, “can you text next time?”

The laugh dies, and Thor doesn’t know how to tell his brother that he didn’t have the nerve, “you imply that there will be another time that I upend my life and disappear for four years.”

“God, I can hope”, Loki’s drawl reminds Thor of the past, before they lost touch of one another. When Thor left home, he thought he’d never see his brother again. Yet, here they were. Like nothing had changed. The familiarity settled strangely in Thor’s stomach, “So, when can I expect you?”

“I’m on my way”, Thor says, noncommittal as he looks at the bottom of his empty coffee cup and figures out how to say his next few words without sounding desperate, “I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t backed out.”

Loki scoffs, “Me? _That_ is a statement you ought to reserve for yourself, brother”, and Thor knows he deserves it, but that doesn’t make it sting any less. The prospect of running is more than appealing right now, as he sits in the back of a mostly empty coffee shop with nowhere else to go but his brother’s couch. There is freedom in the idea of escaping how frightening facing down his demons are. It was the same freeing feeling he had four years ago when his family exploded and Jane stood as a way out. But there is no more Jane. Loki may be rude, but he isn’t wrong: between the two of them, Thor’s the one with the record for backing out.

 _Not anymore_ , he reasons, finding his reserve, “Will you be there to let me in, smartass?”

“No, brother. Unlike _you_ , I have work to do. Make friends with the floor manager. Her name is Loretta Murphy. She’ll be expecting you.”

There’s a pause, before an uncomfortable silence settles on them, and Thor is struck with the irony of their predicament. Four years ago, when Loki needed Thor, he chose someone else. Now, Thor doesn’t have any other options, and while Loki has _several_ , he chooses Thor instead. It’s not lost on him, he just doesn’t know how to address it. No one knows how to address anything in his family; it’s a genetic mutation. “Did I ever say thank you, Loki?”

“We’re not talking about it”, Loki’s voice is no-nonsense and he sounds just like their father, “We don’t…have to talk about it. Okay? You are—I’m…”, he breathes, and Thor can almost see the way he pinches his nose and processes the words he doesn’t want to say. Like, _it’s okay_ , and _I’m here for you_. “Look. It’s fine. You’ll stay with me until you get your own apartment and we’ll talk to—and you and mother can—Thor, don’t make this stranger than it already is, just— “, a noise on the other end of the line stops Loki’s nervous speech in its tracks, and Thor is pulled out of the moment and misses it already.

When Loki returns, his customer service voice is back, “A pleasure, Mrs. Stevens. _I’ll be seeing you soon._ ”

(~*~*~*~)

When Thor gets to Loki’s apartment building, he looks around and understands how animals raised in captivity and released into the wild must feel. His ripped-up jeans and black Henley clash with the sharp-edged suits and a-lined dresses of the coming and goings in the lobby. He feels the eyes on him almost immediately, but these people don’t know how _them_ he used to be, so he wont let the assumptions bother him.

“Good evening”, he says before he reaches the concierge desk, “can I speak to Loretta Murphy?” The kid behind the counter smiles, and with a nod, disappears behind a door to his right.

“Hello, I’m Loretta…may I ask who I’m speaking to?” Thor was distracted before he saw her, but he sure as hell wasn’t after. Loretta stood tall in her fitted black dress with gold accents, making business casual look sinful. Thor couldn’t help leaning in; her dark skin and red tinted lips beckoning like an invitation. She rose an eyebrow, but Thor didn’t miss the quirk of her lips, “Sir?”

His smile widened, “I was told you’d be expecting me, Ms. Murphy.”

“Misses”, she admits, and Thor only retracts his flirtation a little. “What can I do for you?”

He pulls the duffle bag up higher on his shoulder, doesn’t mean to flex, but is excited by _Mrs._ Loretta’s reaction, “I’d love it if you could show me to Loki Laufeyson’s apartment.”

Her brows furrow, and she types into her computer, “Thor Odinson? Can I see an ID?”

He hands it over, and in admiring her, is proud of himself for finally being able to look at a woman and not be reminded of the love he’s lost. For a while, after everything with Jane, being with other women always felt off because his heart was never there with him, too. And he was all heart, if everything with Jane had been any indication. Everything still hurt, but at least he could flirt with a clear conscious.

Sort of. Loretta Murphy was a married woman, and he should _not_ have been looking at her that hard.

“Follow me. Mr. Odinson”, Loretta stepped from behind the desk, the natural sway of her hips like the welcome home parade he could only have wished for.

He tries not to let the word ‘gladly’ slip past the treacherous tug of his lips.

(~*~*~*~)

Loki’s couch is not meant for sleeping.

In fact, everything in his apartment is built for style, _not_ for comfort. It’s all gun metal gray and gold accents and _pointy_. The warmest thing he owns is the faux fire place and the smatter of family pictures that feel so unlike his little brother, Thor starts when he sees them. Above the fire place are a line of photos, most of them of Loki with important people, but wedged somewhere between a picture with Oprah and one with Angelina Jolie is an old picture of the two of them, Thor and Loki, in their football jerseys after a skirmish in high school. They’re covered in dirt and bruises and Thor looks at the picture and can still remember how much the scrape above his eyebrow stung, but they look happy.

The memory hurts like his face had, and leaves a scar like that scrape should have.

He keeps looking at the pictures, and in a short while, Thor notices that over the past four years, his little brother Loki had become a man. A picture is just a picture, sure, but it speaks. He was shaking hands with business moguls and so many honors and awards littered the shelves and table tops and mantle spaces. That MFA was paying off handsomely, if his expensive apartment was any indication.

The biggest indicator of his brother’s success, though, weren’t the pictures or the expensive taste, but _Thor_ , standing in his living room, mostly broke, very homeless, but _here_. Four years ago, if someone were to ask Loki to help Thor with _anything_ he would have laughed in their faces. But distance makes the heart grow fonder, he supposes.

And finding out your family is a lie probably also makes you grow up, a little.

Thor finally finds a picture of their parents. Their smiling faces at the banquet honoring their 27th anniversary. They look happy, and it feels like a rock falls and settles in his stomach, because he cannot stop thinking about Jane's headlines and the other woman and the _sister_ —

“So you found Loretta”, Loki says before he comes fully into view, carrying a bag of Chinese take-out and a six pack of Nogne, “it’s ridiculous that I have to say this: don’t flirt with my floor manager. Its bad taste: she’s married.”

Thor doesn’t know why he crosses the room so fast and hugs Loki. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t play the moment a little smoother; he’d been planning on it since their phone conversation in D.C. He would _not_ lose his shit and get all emotional and do something out of their norm _like hug his little brother_ , no. He was going to say something witty and make them both laugh and make this easy.

Why couldn’t it ever be easy?

For Loki’s part, he was no better. He _did_ put his arms around his brother and hug him back, if only for a moment, before shrugging him off, “you don’t hug men in Armani suits, Thor. You haven’t been gone that long, good lord.”

“Good to see you too, little brother”, Thor responds, taking the beer and the take out from his brother’s hands and returning to the table that held all those bad memories that threatened to ruin his appetite, “still stuck up about your little suits, I see.” He rummages through the food containers, thoroughly distracting himself from Loki and being home and the way it makes his throat tight with emotions.

He sees Loki sit opposite him, from the peripheral of his eye, “that I am.”

Thor wishes he did not look up, that he’d continue to busy himself with the egg foo young, because he looks up and sees the look in Loki’s eyes and the look that sits there makes everything real. “Thor…”

“Don’t…”, Thor starts, and slumps back into the couch, “not yet…I’m not—“

“I know. Me either”, Loki says, sitting up on the couch. His body language is open, but for once, his mouth is actually closed, “you know, I don’t blame—“

“I know. I’m so…”, Thor doesn’t know how to let _sorry_ fall past his lips and keep the tears from going with them.

“I know. But I'm here”, Loki says, and it’s enough.

Thor smiles at his brother. He smiles and thanks whoever he can that even if coming home is hard, and facing your past is harder, he doesn’t have to do it alone. He picks up the egg foo young, and tosses the chopsticks at Loki.

Loki catches them, brows furrowed, “you been gone so long you’ve forgotten how much I hate chopsticks?”

Thor grins, “nope.”


	2. Finding Balance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the longest time coming. Thank you so much for being beautiful and I hope that you love it! Or hate it! Or have feelings. Yell at me about it in the comments. Meet AU Ro, folks! I had to do a little character establishment. Let me know what you think. 
> 
> Our babies will meet soon!! Hang in there yall.
> 
> OTHER NOTES: My boy T'Challa is in this story. And my babies Jean and Scott are gonna be a lil different because I said so. Also, my muse for Logan is Tom Hardy...because...ALSO Johnathan Silvercloud was canonically married to Storm, so yasss.

_“There are three essential rules to romance”, he says, and she can barely hear him above her laughter. His fingertips cover the dip of her waist line, the light touch of skin against skin, drawing shuddered air from her lungs; the biological need to breathe competing with her metaphysical desire to enjoy. Breathing may be winning the battles, but joy, ultimately wins the war. He stops, if only to let her catch her breath. It’s certainly not coming from any desire to stop touching her—stop bringing her joy, “without them, no matter how charming you are, your love affair cannot last. You have to understand the crucial aspects of what makes a relationship work in order to really—are you still listening?”_

_She’s still giggling and looking at him like she’s dazed. But it’s a ruse; he’s got her full attention._

_She’s got her back on the couch cushions, and her feet are propped up into his lap, so she’s thoughtful when she pushes her body up so that her head rests against the couch arm. She will regret that she’s smashed her hard-worked for coils against the polyester cushions, but only later: right now, she doesn’t have the room to care. Her grin is still stupid big and she still hiccups into giggles, the residual effects of joy still lingering in her body, “No, no, please: go on.”_

_He pursues his lips, playfully unsure, “well, if you’re listening, the rules are as follows”, he stops, backtracking, “and must be followed in this exact order to have any effect. That is—the first rule? Maybe before the first rule? Preliminary rule? Introductory rule?”_

_“Darling”, Ororo smiles, taking the hands that have left her and playing with them atop her exposed belly, “you’re going to lose me and then I’ll have to think of…better ways to spend our day off”, she bites her lip, thumbing the skin along his wrist and dragging her fingers in absent patterns along his palm. He grins, melting into the feather-light softness of her touch._

_“We are academics---educators”, he tries to say with some conviction, but his smile keeps giving him away, “not our carnal, one-track minded…students”, he says after some thought, but the air in the room has already changed. The skin she touches feels red hot and tingles, now, with anticipation. The warmth from her body feels radioactive and his own muscles tense in want. And she looks like a dream, thick curls like a halo around her head and her smile rivaling the brilliance of the sun. He thinks that maybe they aren’t just academics or akin to kids, in love._

_Maybe they are both._

_“How about I guess?”, she says, the velvet of her voice raising the flesh of his skin as she pushes up from her position on the couch and places each of her knees on either side of his body. Instinctively, his hands find her waist and hers sidle up over his abdomen and onto his chest, “the first rule is”, her lips close in on his, but do not touch. They just linger there, leaving a space of maybes, “kiss. Often.”_

_He tries to capture her lips, but misses her as she comes around to his ear, placing her lips there instead. It is not as good as kissing her mouth, but it is not bad, “the second rule is to pay close attention”, and he hasn’t, because he’s been so focused on the way her plush lips press against the shell of his ear, that he’s missed where her hands have roamed. He grips her waist a little tighter._

_“The last one…”, her voice rumbles. There is something warm and pulsing, building between them. More than bodies, but a feeling; something like their long-time love becoming a palpable, dimensional, heavy thing. “the last one is to share. Everything”, her body, that had only left some space between them before, closes the gap and he hardens against her soft curves. He moves forward and so does she and they take up all of the other’s space. Neither is sure where one begins and the other ends, and that warm, pulsing, palpability fills up any spaces they miss. Her lips, having found purchase on everything but his own, finally come back to his face and he grins into her smile when they’ve come back to one another. “Did I guess them right?”_

_His nose nuzzles hers, “not even close.”_

“Johnathan?”

The darkness does not answer her, and Ororo is reminded that no one else is there.

She tosses her blankets back, bare feet padding across her cold wooden floors to the window. The sky is an inky, blue-black, pigment spattered like paint on a canvas; permanent. Its rich blackness feels endless, a promise to forever cast the world in it’s dark shadows. She watches as all that shadow gives birth to a pale-glow and the sun breaks the skyline.

It’s marks the beginning of September 8th, and this a bad day for Ororo Munroe.

(~*~*~*~)

As much as Ororo hates the train, and the way it never seems to empty no matter how long it runs, she prefers it to driving. Especially today. Spending too much time alone, in traffic, with nothing but the music and your thoughts to keep you company is _dangerous_ : too much breeding ground for thinking. It ruins the possibility of creating any kind of armor to protect her through the day, and _today_ , she needs it. Her stop comes, and Ororo can’t leave the train fast enough. As much as she’d like to avoid her session today, she knows that it’s better to go than to wallow in her grief alone.

Dr. T’Challa had an office on the 59th floor of a downtown Manhattan business building. He ran a modest practice that specialized in grief counseling. The offices are quiet and unassuming, which can either be welcoming or terrifying. She is suddenly reminded of the first time she met him, on the same steps she climbs to get to said office. It was a Saturday morning, and Scott had told her the earlier she went, the better chance she had at a fast in-take. Her friends had done everything they could, but it wasn’t enough—Ororo needed a professional, after Johnathan died. She’d been chickening out of going and speaking to someone, not really knowing how to go about asking for help, She was about to leave and go home, sure that she’d made a mistake, when the office door opened. “I’ve seen you before”, he said, in his soft, accented, impossibly sure voice, “you’re a friend of Scott Summers?”

Ororo remembers that she’d only nodded, manners and charisma forgotten a couple stories below because if she opened her mouth in that moment, everything she’d been silently suffering through would come tumbling from her lips like water from a broken damn with no effort on his part. It’s been three years, and she’s been seeing him every Saturday morning, ever since.

She expected September 8th to be easier, by now.

(~*~*~*~)

It always struck Ororo how, when she’s in the room with Doctor T’Challa, she felt like the woman that she could be in _there_ was in direct opposition to the woman she had to be _outside_. Beloved, respected, and esteemed science teacher at Xavier Magnet, sure, but also, a grieving widow who lost the greatest love of her life and has had a hard time reteaching herself how to be without him.

“We met in college,” she remembers fondly, rethinking the shape of his eyes and the way his smile took up his whole face. It’s almost like she can really see it, “but it felt like we’d known each other for a lifetime.” The story she begins is one she’s told before, but Dr. T’Challa is patient. She tells the story very differently when she is in the chair, anyway.

 _Outside_ , she always stops there, the lilt in her voice enough for people to know that the memory is fond and good and _enough_. It’s a healed memory. It’s a memory without edges. No protruding sides and jagged ends.

In the office, she tells the story, she thinks, the way Johnathan would. “He’d been seeing someone else. Her name was Star…she was lovely, but he was sure it wasn’t going to last. He was deep, even back then. He was in the _poetry club_ and all his poems were about people he’d fallen in love with. If you can imagine, I’ve been comparing him to Taylor Swift since she got popular”, they both laugh, and it makes the tears in her eyes a little more shameless, “we hooked up at one of his performances. In the back of a bar. After several drinks--we were both making poor decisions that night. And neither of us were drunk enough to justify them. There was just something about him…he made me feel—“, she falters a little, and when her smile drops and the feelings rise like a tide and smash into her, she watches Dr. T’Challa; one hand reaching out for her, as an option, and his all his energy like the boat on the ocean beside her, equipped with a life jacket.

“How did he make you feel, Ororo?”

“Weightless”, she breathes, as the tide comes back in and the tears recede, “absolutely weightless. And I wasn’t _that_ girl…at least, I didn’t think I was. I was the girl with a six-year layout of my life by the end of freshman year. Then I met him and for the first time in my life, I was okay with not having a plan. I was okay with not knowing my next move. I was burden-less”, she’s smiling again, and then starts to laugh because, “except, of course, for the girl he was seeing. She quickly became a problem; she did not want to let him go, and I didn’t blame her. He was an excellent lover—“, heat rises in her cheeks and she has enough shame to at least look guilt for sharing too much, “sorry.”

“This is your space, Ororo. Never apologize for your truths. No matter how risqué”, he smiles, coy, and Ororo remembers why she likes him so much. “Please, go on.”

“Well—Star wasn’t letting go without a fight. And neither was I, but I wasn’t going to let a boy be the reason I couldn’t finish my degree at an Ivy League, so”, she claps, “I made him choose. And Johnathan always accepts a challenge, so he invited Star and I to a performance. He does a poem, and in the poem, he talks about being in the eye of a ‘Storm’, which had been my nickname…”

“I can only imagine why”, Dr. T’Challa slips in, the remark only spurring Ororo on because now she’s enjoying herself.

“but he also talks about stars being an eye into heaven, or something? He was talking about her too. So, me and this girl are _confused_ , because, he was supposed to be choosing, not going back and forth anymore. And in the end”, she shakes her head, “in the end he chooses neither of us. In so many words, he says he still needs to find himself. Star storms out. I…I waited for him after and asked him why he didn’t choose. I don’t really know why I asked, but I guess at the time I didn’t want to let him go. And Johnathan…he apologized, and he said that he felt like he didn’t need to turn the problem onto us when it was his own. He took responsibility and left it there and I’m not proud of young me for it, but I fell in love with him a little bit.” She laughs again, the sound of it stuck somewhere in her memory. She’s back there, falling in love with Johnathan for the first time. And she stays there for a second, and Dr. T’Challa watches as she comes back through time, back to now.

“That’s what makes today hard, Doctor”, her eyes are far away, “because he died on this day and when he did…he took the weightlessness with him. He took the air with him—“, she breathes real heavy, over a lump in her chest, “and I’m left with all these good memories that will never compare to the real thing.”

Contact is good. It’s grounding in a way Ororo doesn’t allow herself to acknowledge. So when Dr. T’Challa offers his hands again, she twines their fingers together, and she matches his breathing. “Your memories are not the problem, Ororo. Your associations with these memories are what keep you from moving forward. Because they are beautiful memories, but you do not think of them this way. You think of them as substitutions.” She nods, and meets his eyes, coming back to reality, where it’s a little lighter than it was when she came in, “Johnathan may not be here physically, but his memories are not a thing you must choose instead of him. They are a part of who he was…they are an extension of him.”

“Extension”, Ororo repeats, feeling the word in her mouth like food from somewhere else, “not substitution…extension.”

“A part of him. We learn to cope with grief by recognizing that, while the pain remains, so does the joy. They coexist. One does not have to dominate the other.” He squeezes her hands and then untwines them so that he can put his palms up, and flat, “grief is never binary. But we compartmentalize, and so, think of the pain and joy of our memories like weights on a scale. Depending on how much we lean on one side, it becomes much heavier than the other”, he tips his left hand down, and his right hand up, “and our scale becomes imbalanced.”

Ororo struggles with what to say, her body closing in her hesitation, “How do I balance the pain of his absence with…with how good his memories make me feel?”  

Dr. T’Challa smiles, _patient_ , “By taking the pain out of remembering. His absence hurts, but remembering him doesn’t always have to. Were you in pain while you told that story?”

Ororo smiles thinking about it, “no…no I didn’t.”

The doctor nods, retuning his hands to his knees, “The memories are good. Allow them to make you feel good.” They hold one another’s gazes for a moment, and she understands. Ororo is always living in one world, fully. She can unlearn that. She can bend. Because remembering how they met didn’t leave her on the floor, a mess. No, she smiled, _today_ of all days, when she was thinking of Johnathan. If she can do that, then she can live with his memories, even if that means living without him.

Dr. T’Challa stands, eyes finding the back of the wall as he goes behind his desk, “go home. Call your friends. Do not live this day the same way you have before; enjoy his memories, so that mourning his death can feel a little easier.”

“Does it go away?” Ororo finds herself asking. She’s done it before, on lower days, when grief has taken all her major functions and she cannot see past her loss. But she thinks she’ll receive this answer differently, now, “the hollow feeling?”

She remembers Dr. T’Challa saying something like, ‘with time’ when she’d first asked this question—every time she’d asked this question when she felt like she’d never stop hurting. But something has changed. He looks her in the eyes, chin resting comfortably on his folded hands and he smiles, warm, _sure_ , “yes.”

(~*~*~*~)

Ororo is used to coming home to empty darkness. It’s what makes the memories so hard; the fact that they remind her of the absence of reality, and Dr. T’Challa has helped her to learn how to start to undo that, but coming across the threshold of her apartment will be the test.

So tonight, when she comes home, it’s jarring because every light in the house is on. And the music is playing and she’s thrown back into memories for a minute, preparing for pain. But it never comes. Instead, she listens well to the laughter over the melodies, recognizing who they belong to immediately. Her panic melts into something warm and comforting.

“Shut the fuck up Scott, and bake the cookies.”

“Kiss my ass, Logan, and turn the music up!”

“You’ll both be leaving my kitchen if you don’t _shut your mouths_!”

Ororo sees them before they see her. Scott moves his hips to Bobby Caldwell, a spatula in one hand, Ororo’s apron tied loosely around his back, and she can already tell he’s not helping. Logan stands, an unlit cigarette tucked behind his ear, looking domestic in his socks and cutting peppers on the kitchen island. Jean stands at the stove, \ making something loud and sizzling, only pretending to not enjoy her husband’s dancing.

It’s beautiful, and Ororo tries not to cry. “Who told you to break into my house?”

They stop, the shine of Scott’s brown eye a welcome before he speaks. Logan gives her one of those genuine, soft smiles he never gives anyone else, and Jean’s eyes are sensible and _caught_ , “okay, I know you told me that the key was for _emergencies only_ , but we wanted to make you dinner because we think that you deserve dinner and we didn’t want you feeling like you had to make it yourself because you needed a break, you _deserve_ a break—“

“Ro”, Logan cuts in, eyes sitting on hers a blanket, “we’re making you dinner and you’re gonna enjoy it.”

She smiles, embracing Jean and not carrying that she’s got sesame seeds and soy sauce in the t-shirt she prefers to cook in instead of the apron. Jean holds her like she’s unbreakable, and Ororo appreciates it, and they stay that way and Ororo never wants to leave. “Aww, group hug”, she hears at the back of her head, Scott wrapping the both of them up in his arms, and they both squeal because he lifts them, all lean and broad and _unnecessary_ , but it’s nice, “you wanna get in on this, Logan?”

Logan doesn’t look up from his food prep, “Bite me, Scott.”

“Logan, that is unnecessarily”, Jean starts, launching into a full defense of Scott’s honor and Storm pats his cheek, the fondness unspoken, but there. There is a _thank you_ somewhere in her eyes, because Scott never forgets about today. Johnathan was his roommate for years, so it’s hard for him, too. And he says _your welcome_ in the way that he pulls her into the kitchen and spins her around to the Commodores, singing (badly).

Scott spins Jean in while he spins Ororo out, and she lands beside Logan. Her hands comes out to touch his shoulder and continues her dance around him, but he catches her hand, pressing her fingers to his lips in a kiss everyone misses. She locks their fingers together, briefly, before spinning back to Scott, and deciding that there would be no more black parades on September 8th.

Today, she would make a new beautiful memory. She thinks, maybe, it will help her find balance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You the MVP for making it to the end. Thanks for reading! Leave your thoughts in the box :)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you kindly for reading. If you really loved it, look me up on tumblr and tell me about it. @electricladay


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